


Not So Blank Slates and Gum Wrappers

by ThePrincessofPain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Catatonic Frank, Gen, Gum Wrappers, Mindbroken Alice, poor Neville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:10:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePrincessofPain/pseuds/ThePrincessofPain
Summary: Sometimes Alice thinks she knows the boy who comes in to visit her.





	Not So Blank Slates and Gum Wrappers

That boy is here again. Watching her, watching the man who stays in the same room as her. He comes so often she has grown to love him, the candy's he brings that she always liked, and she even developed a fondness for the old woman who comes with him and holds his shoulder too tight (Y _ou are hurting him,_ she wants to say. The words never make it to her lips).

Alice hears the nurses around her whispering when they think she can't hear. His parents are around here somewhere, the father confided to a bed and catatonic, and the mother a blank slate, unseeing and unknowing the fate of her husband, not knowing her son when he comes in and sees her. That poor boy has no one but the woman who looks like she will die soon. Who will the boy have then?

She wishes she could take care of him, but the doctors say she is not well enough to leave. But that's okay, she understands. She needs to take care of Frank anyway. Alice just wishes she had something to give him. But all she has is gum wrappers, so she gives him them and relishes the watery smiles he gives her in return.

Alice is afraid that the boy is losing hope. His shoulders seem to sag more and more each time she sees him, and his smiles don't come as quick. And it's such a pity because he has a nice smile (like sunshine). His features are familiar when he smiles, and she can almost see her own features there, hers and Frank's. She watches him grow, from baby, to child, to adolescent, to teenager. He is practically a on to her.

The nurses are too close, and they whisper the boy's parent's names. Alice and Frank. Her name is Alice, and his name is Frank, and she has-had- a baby, but the baby is gone, and it hurts to think about little Nev-… Pain invades her brain and the wrappers fall, her screams bouncing off the walls because for one moment she remembers  _Frank, Augusta,_ _ **Neville her baby boy-!**_  Then it's gone, and she's a smeared slate, things jumbled and murky but not gone, not blank like they think she is.

Sometimes Alice thinks the boy that comes visits her is her son. And then she disregards the thought and turns back to her wrappers with a vacant smile.  _What kind of person would forget their own son?_  She thinks to herself, unaware and uncaring of the tears falling down her cheeks unbidden. She is blank once again, with only half erased smudges left of who she once was.

That boy is here again. Watching her, watching Frank who stays in the same room as her. He comes so often she has grown to love him almost like a son.

**Author's Note:**

> Not too bad for my first HP fic. I didn't think they ever really explored Alice and Frank in canon. It was always Lily this and James that, and yeah, I get the books are about Harry, but aside from one part in the book, no one ever talks about how Alice and Frank are just as bad, if not worse. Harry's are dead, but to have your parents physically there and not mentally? That must have been torture for Neville, and made even worse by going to see them all the time and seeing no change.


End file.
